


Haply the Queen-Moon is on Her Throne

by incon



Category: Red Velvet (K-pop Band)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-08
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-12 03:40:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12950517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incon/pseuds/incon
Summary: They're just that house at the end of the street with ritualistic cannibalism and cultist, gorgeous women who can't seem to keep their hands to themselves. They'd be like sisters, if only sisters touched each other like they did.





	1. cold cuts

**Author's Note:**

> TW: mentions of abuse & violence.

**Haply the queen-moon is on her throne**

I met a lady in the meads,  
Full beautiful, a fairy’s child;  
Her hair was long, her foot was light,  
And her eyes were wild.

           — La Belle Dame sans Merci, Alain Chartier

 

Sooyoung finds her in their rustic kitchen, sleeves folded back but speckled with red. The front of her white polyester shirt is also dusted with minute polka-dots of blood, already browning at the edges. There’s a smear across one alabaster cheek as she swipes at it with the back of her wrist.

She spots Sooyoung entering the kitchen and shorthandedly explains, “Severed the artery.”

Sooyoung  _tsk_ s, but approaches the elder one and hooks a chin over Joohyun’s shoulder to watch her wrench dry a rag-cloth. The water emerges in dregs of translucent red, pelting hard on the aluminium sink. Her breath teases little errant curls at Joohyun’s ear.

“Got a little too excited, again?”

Joohyun side-eyes her. Shrugs her shoulder to displace Sooyoung’s chin. Sooyoung laughs, but eventually withdraws. Not before pressing a kiss to the soft spot where Joohyun’s jaw meets her ear, though. Joohyun hums at the easy intimacy shared between them.

“Any leftovers?” Sooyoung asks over her shoulder. She goes to their well-stocked fridge, where everything is kept neatly in labelled Tupperware containers or wrapped up in butcher paper. She whistles, satisfied. “Very well done, unnie.”

Joohyun shuts the tap, wrings her hands and frowns at her dirtied sleeves. Sooyoung goes to her once more, out of sheer gratitude, and licks at her thumb before swiping at the blood on Joohyun’s cheek. She tolerates, even grins at, Joohyun’s token glower, as she brings her thumb into her mouth.

Behind them, the Persian carpet is ruined and unsalvageable. Sooyoung will have to burn it later, but that is always easier to do with a full stomach.

*

It’s clockwork — Yeri wakes before dinner to rinse the plates and glassware clean. Uncorks a bottle of Burgundy for kicks and lights the candles on their expansive dinning table with a lit match. Seungwan goes to prepare the meats, slicing them finely as Yeri likes, or tossing them in a pan with crushed garlic and stalks of rosemary as Joohyun prefers, or simply like beef tartare. Seulgi tends to the potted plants — moonflowers, lavenders, rosemary, African violets, late-blooming Witch Hazels, sage. Sooyoung rolls up the soiled carpet and scrubs their hardwood floors, promising Joohyun to apply a fresh coat of varnish to it after dinner. Joohyun, of course, had already done her part.

But she gravitates naturally to where Seungwan is, in the kitchen. Seungwan is dribbling olive oil into a heated pan when Joohyun comes close to gently grasp Seungwan’s hips. The heart is fived, of course, but the liver Joohyun likes best, so Seungwan has it diced on the counter. Joohyun presses their cheeks together. Seungwan frees one hand to fondly pat Joohyun’s knuckles, lets her hand rest there even if it inconveniences her.

Sooyoung almost feels intrusive walking into the kitchen.

“There’s congealed blood in the fridge,” Joohyun was saying, nosing Seungwan’s neck the way kittens do their mothers.

Yeri strolls in after a while, unbothered by this open show of affection. She’s dolled up — in a silk blouse with flared cuffs and tight black pants — and Sooyoung appreciates this as she arches her back and reaches for the wine glasses in the overhead cabinet. She retrieves the first few but her fingers are just shy of the remaining ones so she draws back and growls in frustration.

She doesn’t ask immediately, though, and when she does, it’s begrudgingly. “Unnie,” she calls, and Sooyoung steps forward, beckoned.

Sooyoung spares her the usual snidely comment as she reaches for the wine glasses and retrieves them successfully. Yeri doesn’t thank her as she steals them away, but she does walk closely by as she passes. Close enough for their shoulders and hips to brush, and Sooyoung supposes that’s thanks enough.

They carry out the meat in burnished silver platters. It’s almost ritualistic as they place the platters on the heavy oak table and take their respective seats. The youngest goes to pour blood and wine in separate glasses around the table. Seulgi distributes the hearts.

Finally, it is time to eat.

*

It had only been Joohyun at first, and even that was a long time ago. Lifetimes ago. The world did not understand hungry girls, especially those as eccentric as she was — with porcelain doll features and doe eyes — so she stayed in rural areas with heavy snowfall and had her share of woodcutters and farmers and once, a policeman.

She’d learnt since then not to be so reckless as to prey on local authorities. But she had been young and starving and freshly-introduced into this new carnal world, and the officer kept stealing glances her way. He wore his peaked cap crooked and he was barely inducted into his unit when she led him astray one cold, wintry night and slit his throat with a keen razor.

She could not eat for weeks afterward, because of the heavy scrutiny that followed. They did find what was left of him eventually, of course, and such grievous wounds could only be inflicted by a wild animal, according to the coroner. Joohyun had left that place by then on a train paid by what little money the policeman had in his pocket.

Then there was Seulgi, rescued from death’s doorstep. When Joohyun was picking apart what was left of the vacated village, she had found Seulgi lying on a straw mattress, potato sack, torn at the seams as a makeshift blanket, pulled to her chest as meagre protection from the cold. Seulgi had, in her delirium, mistaken Joohyun for some saintly figure, confessing her sins and regrets through a throat choked with fever.

Joohyun had been plagued with loneliness, and saw it as an opportunity. Seulgi awoke to a new and greater life.

Seulgi had been resistant to killing, at first, because of how she was raised — bound to religion and with a strict sense of morality that she did not deviate from. She had been repulsed by her new identity Joohyun had blessed her with, and had initially intended to burn the cabin that housed the both of them down, with her in it.

Instead, in an act of mercy, Joohyun woke one day to an empty bed and a broken heart.

She returned years later, after Joohyun had found Seungwan. Her eyes had changed since then, something sharper and fiercer in her gaze. There was always a certain deep sadness that nobody could cure her of. She had found a living stealing corpses from morgues, and was surprisingly more efficient in hiding herself from the world than Joohyun had been.

But she was no less herself.

*

Seulgi dislikes to be touched. But the years had softened her some so she does grant certain concessions, especially to Joohyun and Sooyoung.

Joohyun because she can’t deny her anything, feeling an almost burdensome sense of obligation towards her. But there is also respect and admiration, because Joohyun had forgiven and accepted her once more despite having hurt the elder one deeply. Joohyun touches her fleetingly, casually, as she passes by or when they hand plates to each other.

Sooyoung because she feels for her the most. She’s most lenient with her, allowing hugs and more brazen touches. And sometimes, when it’s hard to accept who they are, or when one of them feels nostalgic for a life they used to know, they’d crawl into bed together and sleep.

In the rare instances that they do fight, it’s usually Sooyoung yelling at a silent and stoic Seulgi, and they reconcile when Sooyoung inevitably apologises as she joins her in bed.

“You’re judging me.”

Seulgi swings her head to look at Sooyoung crouched at the floor near the body. “I’m sorry?”

“You’re thinking of how much better you are than all of us.”

“Why would I?”

“Because you’re so  _good_ and  _virtuous_ so the sight of us must sicken you, doesn’t it?” Sooyoung rises to her full height, which is a good few inches taller than Seulgi. Seulgi seems dismissive of this hot flare of temper.

“You don’t sicken me, Sooyoung.”

Sooyoung laughs, loud and scathing. “I can see it in your eyes, unnie. You can’t even look at me.” She continues, “Why can’t you accept who we are? Who  _you_ are?”

Seulgi’s eyes flash dangerously. Despite their differences in height, Sooyoung feels intimidated. She knows Seulgi is not one to be trifled with, but neither can she pretend that Seulgi’s averted gaze doesn’t hurt.

At last, Seulgi says, in a tone that speaks of her herculean constraint and enduring patience, says, “I don’t see why it’s of any concern to you that I am the way I am.”

The fight that followed required Seungwan to come between them, Yeri taking Sooyoung away to her room to cool down while Seulgi stayed behind at Joohyun’s behest.

“None of you sicken me,” Seulgi starts. Her voice is steady and clear, though the way she speaks is as though she is being commanded to speak. “I don’t hate or think I’m superior to any of you.”

Seungwan tries to deflate the tension with a smile, glancing between the oldest two. But Joohyun’s not smiling. She’s looking at Seulgi as if waiting to see what Seulgi will do.

Seulgi feels the need to prove herself. She stiffens, stands straighter. “I’m not going to run away.”

Joohyun frowns. “I hadn’t even thought of that. You still think about it?”

Seulgi blinks and bows her head, caught.

“I’m not punishing you,” Joohyun says, gently. “I only want to know if what Sooyoung said is true.”

“I already said I don’t —”

“Not about that. Do you still hate yourself, Seulgi-ah?”

Seulgi is silent, detesting that she is cornered. Seungwan starts to approach, hands raised to touch, but Seulgi retreats several steps back, stopping Seungwan in her tracks. Joohyun looks disappointed.

“It’s not your concern —”

“ _You_ are my concern, Seulgi,” Joohyun asserts.

“I can live with myself. I think that’s what matters.”

Seulgi awakens later to the dip of her bed and Sooyoung’s apologetic eyes glinting in the dark. She clutches the bend of Seulgi’s arm. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs.

Seulgi stares at her some more, for at least a minute, still drowsy and disoriented. She pulls back the blankets, an olive branch, an offer that Sooyoung readily accepts — she climbs into bed, under the warm plushness of Seulgi’s fleece blankets, and cuddles into Seulgi. Her feet are cold as she presses her toes against Seulgi’s calf, teasing.

“You don’t sicken me,” Seulgi feels the need to repeat. She feels Sooyoung nodding against her throat.

“I already know.”

“Then why say something untrue?”

“I’m a hot-blooded youth, unnie,” Sooyoung’s lips move against her jugular. Seulgi suppresses a shiver. “I say things I don’t mean.”

“You’re over a hundred. How long are you going to use that excuse for?”

“For as long as I look like a twenty-year-old.” Sooyoung’s voice grows thicker as she grows drowsier.

“So forever, then?”

Seulgi feels Sooyoung’s lips curve into a smile. “Forever.”

*

Joohyun met Seungwan when Joohyun had been full of resentment and spite after being abandoned by Seulgi. Lately she had been more vicious, more cruel, leaving trails of bodies behind for others to find. After Seulgi’s refusal to acknowledge and reconcile her nature, it felt good to announce it to the world.

Seungwan had been married to a policeman (of course, another policeman), who was abusive and corrupt. He was not just another drunkard that was easy prey. He was a disciplined man, intelligent and sometimes not repugnant when he gave the boy who shined his shoes some extra allowance.

Seungwan was withdrawn and mousy, and too good for this world. Despite all the horrible wounds and hurts her husband had inflicted on her, she still loved him. She had found some shred of him that was kind and fair to her and clung onto it and loved him for it. What was worse was that Joohyun had cared little if he beat her to death. It only mattered that Joohyun had been starved of love. Nothing was as great as her hunger and her pain.

Joohyun had planned to kill him in his home, and leave the demented housewife to the mercies of unkind society. But it was poorly executed, and Joohyun had been sliced open with a letter opener before she could properly slaughter him. Joohyun stared wonderingly at the laceration, at how the skin split and parted but bled sluggishly. She held a hand against it, when a soft voice called out the policeman’s name and Seungwan rapped on the door before entering his study.

She carried a kerosene lamp, and wore a white nightgown that fell just short of her ankles. She looked, to Joohyun, like a promise of redemption. A way back home.

They locked eyes for a handful of heartbeats. Then Seungwan said, “Whatever my husband did to you, I’m sure he deserved it. But he’s dead now so you should go before I call the police.”

Joohyun frowned, confused. “You’re letting me go?”

Seungwan gasped when she saw dark, deoxygenated blood seeping between Joohyun’s fingers. And held her lamp to Joohyun’s arm to see. She took Joohyun’s hand gently, tilting it to better see the wound past Joohyun’s fingers. Her touch was light and gentle and Joohyun watched her closely throughout the entire affair, curious.

Seungwan smelled of sleep. When she fretted over Joohyun’s wound, Joohyun saw bruises blooming up her arms like plucked purple petals, and red, abraded skin around her wrists as though she had been bound too tight by ropes.

In the near darkness of the room, Seungwan gently dressed Joohyun’s wound as her husband lay dead nearby. Joohyun had already fallen past the point of no return.

*

Seungwan through the years is unfailingly kind and tender-hearted. She yields and yields and it’s hard for Joohyun to see her being taken for granted or hurt. It’s been decades since and Seungwan still flinches when Joohyun raises her hand to reach over Seungwan or something of the like.

Joohyun looks horrified. She cradles Seungwan’s jaw, thumb involuntarily stroking her earlobe. “I would never hurt you.”

Seungwan smiles mildly, disappointed at herself. “I know,” she says. “It’s not you. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

“No, don’t apologise. It’s not your fault,” Joohyun insists. “No one is going to hurt you like that again.”

Seungwan exhales, and looks happily resigned to whatever Joohyun insists on giving her. She appears a touch exasperated at having gone through this numerous times but nods and leans into Joohyun’s touch. She breathes, “I know. Thank you.”

The kiss Joohyun gives her is chaste and close-mouthed and sweet. It’s assurance — that she is loved and that she is deserving of that love. The fingers that clasp hers and tug her towards bed and a little later, runs down her back, are all assurances that Seungwan now cannot see herself living without. A life without Joohyun’s love — what kind of inane existence would that be?

*


	2. violent delights

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for rape.

Yeri has taken many lovers throughout her blessedly long life. If she does it out of boredom, loneliness, the need to take, the thrill of a predatory chase, she doesn’t know and doesn’t much care. Human lives are so trivial, so petty. But also so entertaining. Their eyes are so easily drawn to the planes of her back, to her saccharine smiles and the slit of her dress. Their hands too quickly straying to her waist, where they remain throughout the night. It’s too easy that it feels like cheating, almost. Those nights, it’s all garish neon and greedy fingers and ecstasy that’s as fun as it is temporary.

But on other nights, when sunlight begins to wane and she’s in no mood to entertain or be entertained, she sits by her lonesome at the bar, nursing whatever drink the pretty bartender throws her way.

The bartender’s smiles are sickle-sharp, her eyes alive with some scathing wit and her mouth is quick to follow — just how Yeri likes them. Her hair is a wispy brown that feathers over her forehead, scarce fringe settling just short of her eyebrows. The rest of her hair is gathered up into an updo.

“It’s ridiculous how filthy you are,” Yeri says, lips at the brim of her glass. She’s talking about the many stains on the bartender’s otherwise crisp white polyester shirt. “Isn’t that a health violation?”

“Usually all I have to do is pop open one more button and there’s no more questions asked,” the bartender says, but doesn’t demonstrate. Doesn’t even spare Yeri a glance as she continues to religiously clean the counter with a dishrag. A bartender with wonderful work ethic.

“Oh? I didn’t realise it was  _that_ kind of bar.” Yeri downs the drink in one go. Runs a fingertip along the damp rim. There’s barely a burn at the back of her throat. She’s not one for whisky, either, preferring gentler wines or martinis, but the night hasn’t been kind to her, and thus calls for something harsher.

The girl swiftly refills Yeri’s glass. “It’s not.”

Yeri’s in somewhat of a spiteful mood, and the bitter aftertaste in her mouth simply refuses to go away, souring her mood even further. “Shame,” Yeri says blandly. “You’re pretty.”

The bartender visibly flusters at the compliment and any other time, Yeri would have taken advantage of this opportunity. But as it is, she sips at her drink and props her head up against her palm, mooning. The girl smells of naïve youth, sweet underneath the musk of sweat and liquor. There’s young blood flowing in her veins that Yeri appreciates. She’s not yet ripe, the bartender — still without the womanly lushness or the fuller hips that comes with adulthood. But there’s maturity in her eyes, as though the hard knowledge of this world has long been hammered into her. Also interesting.

“You’re underage,” Yeri decides.

The girl bristles. “No,” she says, defensive. “But I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“You are,” Yeri smiles. “It’s not right for a minor to be in a place like this. It’s illegal, you know.”

“Are you threatening me? Is that a threat?”

“Sweetheart, if I were threatening you, you’d know,” Yeri drains the glass and this time, the girl does not fill it with another serving. Instead, she glares.

There’s shaky fear underneath the glare that manifests in a white-knuckled grip on the rag as she twists it nervously in her hands. “So what do you want?”

Yeri lifts the glass, studies the diamond cut glass with mild disinterest, eyes unfocused and dreary, and says, “All I want, is some quiet and someone to pour me a drink. And a story. You owe me a story.”

The girl goes to fetch the whisky to replenish Yeri’s empty glass. She eyes this strange, prickly woman warily as she does, asking, “A story?”

Yeri hums. “Of course. Nothing is free in this world. You want my silence? You’ll have to buy it.”

“I don’t know any stories.”

“Of course you do. Tell me why an underage girl is serving drinks at this seedy, disgusting place?”

The girl frowns, insulted. “This seedy, disgusting place that you’re at?”

Yeri waves a dismissive hand, eager to get on with it. “I never said it was beneath me.”

“It’s my uncle’s. He was kind enough to let me work here while I get myself together.”

“Right,” Yeri scoffs. “How much is he paying you?”

The girl narrows her eyes ever so slightly, tolerating the insults with quickly-thinning patience. “Enough.”

Yeri nods, “Right. Right.” Finishes off her drink and gestures with her chin for another.

The girl doesn’t bother returning the bottle back to the liquor rack, fingers worrying at its neck. At Yeri’s derisive, condescending words, the girl fires, “You don’t look much older than I am.”

“Thank you.”

“That wasn’t a compliment.”

“It wasn’t?” her voice is teasing, and the smile on her face is akin to what adults wear when demonstrating cheap magic tricks to children at the playground. A deft but discreet change of hands to hide the coin, to pluck it from a child’s ear — to make fools of them.

“No,” the bartender says, trying not to sound sullen. “It’s definitely not.”

 _cute_ , Yeri thinks. “I guess I don’t wear it on my face.”

“What?”

“My age.”

The girl makes a face that’s between a glare and a grimace. “I don’t want to know where you wear it, then.”

Yeri laughs, a pleasant laugh that sounds like tinkling windchimes late in the night. The girl watches the sticky gloss of Yeri’s red lips. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

A man in a polo shirt comes along then, claiming the stool two spaces to the right of Yeri, slapping some loose change onto the counter and demanding a scotch, neat, in a voice so coarse that he can only be a chain-smoker. Yeri can smell the putrid odour of cigarettes sitting on the tip of his tongue, like a mouthwash full of ash and nicotine. The man stares at the girl’s exposed collarbones, at the ‘v’ nestled between them (no doubt imagining his tongue dipping into it). Yeri feels a flash of hot anger.

“Give that here,” Yeri demands with a flick of her finger. “Yes, that bottle.”

“But —” the girl protests, but Yeri has already seized the bottle from her grasp, slamming it into the counter with a sickly-sweet smile and several notes that’s more than enough to cover the cost of the bottle.

“Find something else to stare at, you balding prick,” Yeri says, with a ditzy bat of her lashes.

She misses the way the girl blanches, eyes darting back and forth between Yeri, standing five-feet-two-inches and frail-looking, and the man, who gnashes his teeth in irritation. But there is something in Yeri’s eyes, glassy as they are, that’s so cold its searing hot. As though begging for some bloodletting, her own or his. Dangerous, all the same.

“Okay, that’s enough,” the girl placates, palms raised outward. “We’ll all just calm down and mind our own businesses, all right?”

The man grumbles but backs down, deciding it’s not worth it. Yeri doesn’t settle back down until the man shuffles away with his paid-for bottle of scotch to drink in peace. Yeri exhales, back still rigid and shoulders squared, feeling like a tightly coiled spring.

“Hey, will you please relax?” the girl nudges a filled glass to her. “Here, have a drink, then leave, please.”

The bartender sees how Yeri’s jaw clenches, how Yeri blinks as though disoriented and unaware of where she is. Yeri eventually reaches for the glass, lapping it up in one smooth finish.

“You gave me water?” Yeri frowns at the empty glass that she turns over in her hand.

“It looked like you had too much to drink,” the girl explains.

Yeri laughs at that — nothing at all like her previous laugh. This one’s mocking and harsh, and reminds the girl of the serrated edges of a saw. She laughs and laughs; the buzz in her blood almost has her throwing the glass back onto the counter.

*

Joohyun lies in sleepless wait for sunrise. Nightmarish taunts of lit bonfires and erected wooden stakes and the heat of fire eating at her clothes, her skin, remain freshly imprinted in her mind. She lies gasping for breath, forgetting for a moment that she doesn’t need to breathe.

Seungwan stirs next to her. Because somewhere in the night Joohyun had rolled away from her tight hold. She opens her eyes to the deep purple evening, eyes immediately seeking the elder one out. Joohyun dislikes being touched at moments like this, she’d learnt, and so watches Joohyun try to put herself together into something passable, even as her fingers twitch in their yearning to comfort.

“Again?” she asks, softly.

“It’s nothing. I’m fine.” Joohyun fixes her eyes at a discoloured spot on the ceiling. “It was only a dream. It’ll pass in a minute.”

“Does it still hurt?”

“Of course not.”

“Joohyun unnie?”

“Hmm?”

“It’s okay to not be okay, you know?”

Joohyun tries to laugh, but it comes out like a bark. She winces at the crude, uncalled-for sound. “I’m okay, I’m okay.”

Seungwan shifts closer, trying her luck. She starts with a fingertip, tracing the back of Joohyun’s hand to the valleys of her knuckles. Watches closely for Joohyun’s expression. Joohyun merely sighs.

“If you’re really okay, I’ll believe you,” Seungwan whispers. And even that seems far too loud. “But if you’re still in pain, then please tell me.”

Were it someone else, Joohyun would never admit it. But this is Seungwan. Seungwan, who deserves to know the most loathsome part of her, deserves to know her at her best, deserves everything of her; Seungwan, who has mountains of love and an abundance of tenderness to give.

“It’s — it’s my thighs,” Joohyun confesses.

“May I?”

Joohyun nods, somewhat timidly. Seungwan reaches for the back of her thighs, where there are raised ridges for scars, for however long they had held fire to Joohyun’s flesh until it scarred permanently. The skin there is stretched tight and always hot, so Seungwan soothes them with cold fingers, until Joohyun’s sighing and pliant in her hands.

“I’m so sorry, for what they did to you.”

Joohyun’s eyes snap open and she looks distinctly uncomfortable being on the receiving end of Seungwan’s unblinking gaze. “There’s no need to be sorry. It was a long time ago.” Meaning,  _before I met you_.

“I’m still sorry,” Seungwan insists, because there had been nobody for Joohyun after Seulgi left. And she must have suffered greatly, because any pain is greater when suffered alone. There was no dignified way to imagine Joohyun crawling away from her captors, like some wounded animal in a hunt. Seungwan huddles closer, for her own sake if not Joohyun’s.

“All right. If you want to be sorry, you can be,” Joohyun concedes with a small, obliging smile. She’s never one to refuse Seungwan.

If need be, she’ll kill for her. That’s an easy promise to make.

*

Sooyoung first met Yeri at the waterside of a river, swollen from the recent monsoon, sitting naked and scrubbing at the soles of her feet with a pumice stone. Sooyoung had returned from a month-long trip and had received news of the new addition to their patchwork family. She had felt distinctly like a voyeur, spying amidst broad leaves and summer heat. Yeri’s hair fell down the side of her neck in glorious tangles, and she hummed a lilting maiden’s tune that carried to where Sooyoung stood watching.

“You’re watching me,” Yeri said, after a time.

Sooyoung stepped out of the thicket. Yeri made no effort to dress herself. Fat drops of water clung onto skin and caught light like precious gemstones at the base of her neck.

“I wasn’t decent,” Yeri said in an almost admonishing way. But it was softened by the charming tilt of her head and the wily barely-there smile that she equipped. “That would have been quite a scandal. You’re quite the peeping Tom.”

Sooyoung fixed her eyes at Yeri’s face. Ignore the lush spread of virginal flesh that was before her. “You know, I daresay you enjoy being watched.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because you’re still indecent.”

Yeri tossed her hair to the side. Let the pumice stone fall from her hands to the grassy riverbank, leaving her hands free to untangle her hair. Yeri studied Sooyoung critically, with narrowed eyes to ascertain the stock of her character, her wants, her temper.

And Sooyoung thought,  _what a conniving little devil you are_.

“I think it’ll be a long time until we get bored of each other,” Yeri said.

Sooyoung could only agree, and helped the girl (woman? Creature? Satan?) into a dress that’s appropriately dyed a deep red and felt her heart beat at double-time.

*

“You.” The voice is accusatory, which Yeri deems to be completely unfair. She hasn’t even done anything yet.

“Hi,” Yeri grins, shows teeth. “I promise to be on my best behaviour today.”

The bartender glances about uneasily. She’s wiping dry martini glasses at double-time, now. Yeri takes a seat, anyway. She hasn’t been on the receiving end of a rejection for so long and she isn’t about to start now.

“Are you really on that short a leash?” Yeri inquires, with faux curiosity that sounds too much like a taunt.

The bartender allows that to pass with a glower. But says nothing, retrieving a tumbler glass for Yeri.

“No,” Yeri says. “I’m feeling more like a cocktail tonight.”

“Okay,” the bartender says as she slowly returns the glass back to where its stacked under-counter. “What’ll it be?”

“I’ll drink whatever you give me.”

Yeri’s feeling more audacious, more charming, in the mood for games and cat-and-mice chases tonight. All it takes is a flick of a switch. After all, that’s Yeri’s favourite thing to be — whiplash-inducing. And the bartender’s so spry and limber, and so deliciously  _young_. The young are so easily corruptible, especially where alcohol is involved.

Yeri doesn’t pay much attention to whatever flourish the bartender does or whatever drink she places in front of Yeri. The herbal, bitter-and-sweet mouthful she swallows barely registers. The bartender’s working hard at drying her rinsed glasses, apparently hell-bent on ignoring her. Yeri’s wearing a backless sequined dress paired with stilettos — she will  _not_ tolerate being disregarded. 

Yeri scoffs, and tips over a small bowl of salted peanuts onto the counter. She smiles, satisfied. “Oops.”

“Jesus!” the bartender exclaims, exasperated. “What is it that you want? My number?”

“Your number? No, that’s the last thing I want.” The girl’s face falls slightly and Yeri grins.  _hooked, reeled._  “Besides, won’t it be much more romantic to call it fate when we meet again?”

“I work here,” the girl flatly answers.

“Not legally, anyway.”

The girl squints at Yeri. “So you  _do_ want something.”

“We can start with your name.”

The girl is evidently reluctant to give that up. Yeri absently collects the peanuts on the counter, flings them in the bartender’s direction. The bartender says, “You’re crazy.”

Yeri smiles, doesn’t refute it. “This is a pile of peanuts here, but it can be a pile of peanuts there.”

“Alright! Stop, for fuck’s sake. I’m Saeron. Jesus!”

“Which is it?”

“Which is what?”

“Your name. Saeron or Jesus?”

Saeron picks up a peanut sitting between the criss-cross laces of her tennis shoe and tosses it Yeri’s way. It hits Yeri between the eyes, and if it had bounced off her hair, Yeri might have reached over to make her swallow whole a wine bottle — the most expensive one. Joohyun unnie might be proud of her, then.

*

She sat crouched like some shameful bestial figure, crooked and hiding from light. Hair draped down the sides of her face like knotted ropes. There’s skin and flesh and residual regret under her fingernails. It stinks.

His hand lay limp and unfurled near her foot, several nails torn from their nailbeds. There were long, thin furrows that followed along the bend of her arm, where narrow margins of dark blood had begun to well up.  She sat with her eyes tightly shut, grimacing as though in great pain.

Sooyoung got to her hands and knees from where she had been pinned down, feeling phantom weight press down on her ankles where his hands had manacled. There’s dirt clinging to her hair and her jaw smarts where he had socked her. But she perseveres in crawling towards her wayward saviour, who sat there injured and unspeaking.

It hurt to speak, and she suspected her jaw was a little dislodged, so instead she reached for the bleeding arm, intending to see if the wound was as grievous as she had thought, even if there was little she could do about it. Other than to staunch the bleeding with the dirty hem of her raggedy shirt. But her saviour had, at her touch, recoiled away. Shuddered deeper into herself where it seemed no one would reach her.

Sooyoung frowned. Reached boldly for the hand again because it was a stupid thing, to deny her this when the woman had killed for her not too long ago. This time, Sooyoung’s fingers had only skimmed the woman’s arm before her eyes snapped open, the pupils dilated and somewhat feral, and glared.

There was a warning, in her eyes, that would have cowed others into submission. But Sooyoung, made of sterner stuff from the many hardships she’d endured on the streets, frowned impatiently, and seized the hurt arm once more. She could feel the heat of the woman’s stare at the crown of her head as she swiped at the blood with her thumb. When Sooyoung looked up, satisfied that the scratches were only skin-deep, the woman’s eyes were desolate, some deep inconsolable sorrow and loathing had pervaded them, made them into something unrecognisable.

They were trained on the side of Sooyoung’s face, at her hurt jaw, at her collarbones where her shirt tore and gave way to skin, and whispered, raw and quiet, “I had to.”

Sooyoung did not understand. But she did understand the look on the woman’s face so she hurried closer.

“He was going to — I had to,” the woman repeated.

Sooyoung nodded along, but the woman continued to speak deliriously. She took her saviour’s hands, which were cold and coarse, into hers and held together the torn pieces of her shirt with them, sealing away exposed skin. Even as no words passed between them, it was clear what Sooyoung had meant. The woman then finally looked at her.  _Looked_ and recognised the entirety of her.

And said, about Sooyoung’s jaw, “We must have that looked at.”

*

Sooyoung remembers Seungwan, kind and maternal, as she tended to her injured jaw, apologising for any pain, refusing to touch before permission is given. She remembers feeling wonderstruck but not intimidated by the lavish interior of their home, this merry band of odd women. From velvet drapery to sheepskin rugs to heavy-duty mahogany furniture. She remembers China silk sheets under tightly-clenched fingers. Sooyoung remembers urgent but frustrated murmuring through the walls, in hushed arguments over inviting Sooyoung to their home.

Seungwan cradled Sooyoung’s jaw with feather-light fingertips. “Don’t worry,” she reassured, looking distantly worried herself. “Those two argue all the time.”

When Sooyoung tried to speak, her mandible flares up in pain. Seungwan shakes her head, hushing her. “Don’t. It’ll only hurt more.”

Sooyoung remembers Joohyun, a strange quiet that’s too loud. It’s only deep trenches, with her. And just pretty enough for Sooyoung to inhale sharply through her nose at first sight. But her eyes had been cold and calculating, and her posture hostile. She had been dressed in khaki jodhpurs tucked into stiff riding boots. She smelled strongly of flowers, as though she had taken a flower bath just before, or kept dried petals in her pockets. Sooyoung disliked the way Joohyun looked at her, a critical and assessing quality to her gaze as she looked Sooyoung up-and-down.

Sooyoung also remembers the tender way Seungwan had introduced her saviour to her. “Seulgi must have found you. And thank god she did.”

“Yes,” she went on, at the questioning sound Sooyoung’s throat produced, “the one who had found you was Seulgi. And you shouldn’t worry about Joohyun unnie, really. She’s harmless. Just give her time; she’ll warm up to you.” A pause; a vague smile. “Besides, time is all we have.”

Upon hearing footsteps approach the door, soldierly and measured, yet lightly-treading, Seungwan added, almost like an afterthought, “Be kind to her. If she ever makes you feel as though you are filthy or undeserving, it’s only because she thinks that of herself.”

Then she splays her fingers lightly over the sensitive swelling of Sooyoung’s jaw, where the jaw hinges into place, and lays strips of cut ginger over it. Sooyoung tries her hardest not to bristle at the brief twinge of pain or wince where the moisture that emerges from the slices of ginger dripped onto the bedding.

Seungwan’s hands left her face to answer the door, even before the three decisive knocks that had Sooyoung twining her damp palms together. The door opened to Seulgi, shirt untucked and hair messily undone out of her braid, reddened imprints of teeth at the dramatic curve of her jaw and collarbones, as it to imply,  _look here, this is mine_. She looked just shy of furious, and for a moment, when she turned to regard Seungwan, Sooyoung feared that she might have caused another rift.

But then Seulgi’s expression softened, mulled over into centuries-old exhaustion.

“Did everything turn out alright?” Sooyoung heard Seungwan quietly ask.

Had Sooyoung not been sitting on her bed, Seulgi might had dropped her head onto Seungwan’s steadfast shoulder, and turn her face into Seungwan’s throat. Inhale greedy lungfuls of some odd mix of vanilla and sandalwood. But as it is, Seulgi could only nod and say, “Please go to her. Thank you for your help today.”

Seungwan planted a kiss on Seulgi’s cheek before she went, and then there was only Sooyoung, Seulgi and a silence that neither of them knew what to do with.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been hard to write. Everything feels clumsy and out of place. I'll be back to edit. 
> 
> Stay safe.


	3. I once did know myself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is headed somewhere, I promise. 
> 
> Another update to usher in the new year. Happy new year! I hope you're somewhere feeling warm and loved and alive. I hope 2018 will be kinder to y'all the way wenrene had been last night.

Loving Yeri is a trying affair and not for the faint-hearted. She’s prone to mood-swings and extreme notions, and reminds Saeron very much of a pendulum, swinging this way and that. Her hands are just as likely to be bruising or tender. She’s a walking contradiction — critical of other’s pretentious flights of fancies while she indulges in her own. Some would even say she’s a hypocrite.

But seated in Yeri’s immensely luxuriously car, the windows heavily tinted and the seats made of immaculate leather, Saeron can’t help but feel like she’s entered the lion’s den.

Yeri’s busy navigating the many twists and turns of the street, but glances over and asks, at Saeron’s apparent distress, “Why do look like you’re about to wet yourself?”

“I honestly don’t think I can. I’m not sure I can afford the cleaning fee,” says Saeron. “Just what do you do? Are you a celebrity?”

Yeri makes a face that’s telling of how much she detests that comparison. “No.”

“So what do you do, then?” Saeron asks, genuinely curious.

“I own several businesses,” Yeri replies.

“You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?”

Yeri laughs. “Suddenly I’m so much more attractive, aren’t I?”

“Not at all. You drive like a madman.”

It’s true. The drive is hardly smooth-going — full of sudden turns and tailgating and accelerating in narrow roads that has Saeron feeling horribly anxious. She grips the car seat, afraid. Yeri drives exactly how Saeron expects young, spoiled heiresses in fancy sportscars to drive, reckless and full of assurance that any possible consequence is already accounted for.

“Oh please,” Yeri rolls her eyes, makes another abrupt turn into an alleyway. “I’m not inexperienced.”

“You sure drive like you are.”

Yeri sneers at her, takes her eyes off the road long enough for Saeron to snap: “Watch the road!”

“You’re a minor working at a bar. I expected you to take well to danger.”

“Dying and going to juvie are two different things,” Saeron insists. “And where are we going anyway? It’s really late.”

In the passing orange streetlights that’s lurid and harsh on the skin, Yeri looks almost child-like. The planes of her face are gentle, unlike the rest of her. There’s shaded amber under the lift of her cheekbones. And her eyes, usually so perceptive and intelligent, are the colour of sweet sherry in the occasional brash lighting that slants and slinks away. Yeri knows when she’s at her prettiest, but when she’s unaware of it — well, she’s beautiful then, too.

Saeron’s so taken by it that she doesn’t catch what Yeri’s saying at first.

“…hungry? There’s a decent steakhouse still open.”

“This late at night?”

“It’s mine.”

“Oh.”

Yeri’s lips quirk up in a smile. “Unless you have somewhere else in mind?”

Yeri’s look doesn’t seem to warrant an alternative, so Saeron says, “No, no. I’m good.”

Yeri’s smile is broad enough to reveal her canines. “Yes, you are.”

She thinks there’s still some good wine left in the wine cooler that’ll go beautifully with the meat.

*

Sooyoung’s in the study, snapping shut a book she’s been pretending to read for the past four-and-a-half years. Her attention span is still a pathetic thing. She pours herself a glass of rich red from their latest supply; Seulgi has always kept a steady stock of it in their mini-fridge, artfully hidden behind a cabinet door.

“Are you ever in the study to  _read_? Or just to drink?” Seulgi says from the door, wrapped in a fuzzy bathrobe that leaves her shins bare, hair still damp from her shower.

“You just caught me at a bad time, unnie,” Sooyoung answers, lavishing more than just the blood as her eyes trek the perilous path up Seulgi’s legs. “You took a shower? Without  _me_?”

“I can do a lot of things without you.”

“Ouch.”

“You could watch me, if you want.”

Sooyoung wets her lips, eyes alight and salacious. “Can I?”

“No,” Seulgi approaches, leaves wet footprints on the European oak flooring. Has Sooyoung watching her every step the way a dog watches a bone, “Of course not.”

“Not on the carpet please,” Sooyoung pleads, breathlessly, already setting aside her glass, “I don’t want another rug burn.”

Seulgi glances about first. “Where’s Yeri?”

“Trapping flies.”

“Joohyun unnie? Seungwan?”

“Asleep.”

Sooyoung’s hands seek out Seulgi’s ribs, her fingers fitting along the grooves there so neatly, even through the robe. She presses her face to Seulgi’s stomach, feeling flat muscles tense as she noses into the thick material. Seulgi’s hands slide past the rise of her shoulders, up the sides of her neck to her face, then finally tangling in Sooyoung’s hair. Seulgi tugs at its ends a little too forcefully to be gentle.

“You know, unnie,” Sooyoung says, fingers undoing the sash that holds the robe together, “you’re never in the study to read, either.”

*

Seulgi was busy transplanting her plants — where she’d been all afternoon — when Sooyoung found her. Sooyoung crouched next to her, who was so preoccupied with loosening the soil that she did not even regard Sooyoung’s presence. Sooyoung waddles closer so their knees bump. That seems to jar Seulgi from her hard focus. Her withering look, however, is hardly a reward.

“Yes?” the words are curled behind her teeth, irritated by this uncalled-for invasion of privacy.

Sooyoung has always been gifted with stubbornness and a headstrong constitution that, to Seulgi, was oftentimes more of a curse than anything. “I wanted to see if you needed any help.”

“No, thank you,” Seulgi said curtly.

Sooyoung did not know it then, but Seulgi’s plants and flowers were precious to her. It was the only thing that was truly hers, in a home where she shared everything else, and she had meant to keep it that way. So when Sooyoung reached out regardless, to take the root ball from Seulgi’s hands, in a possessive spike, Seulgi had shouldered her away.

“These are not yours to touch,” she told the younger one. “Find someone else to bother, please.”

This was some time ago, mind. When Sooyoung had been newly indoctrinated and Seungwan was the only who spoke to her on a regular basis. Joohyun hid away in her room most of the time, and spoke only shortly to Sooyoung, and mostly in passing. Seulgi went about her own way, the way water curves around a rock, and ignored Sooyoung completely.

Sooyoung was used to being shunned, but after the kindness shown to her, she felt it severely frustrating and hurtful that the one person she owed her life to wouldn’t even spare her a glance. For a while, Seulgi had made Sooyoung feel as worthless as that man had.

Sooyoung’s days then were blue-tinted with depression and worry. Worry that she’d live this way forever, worry that eternity would make little worth of her days the way it seemed to be for Joohyun, who seemed trapped in this very house the same way rats were in their cages.

When the full moon came, bloated and ugly, Seulgi had expressed her hesitance at allowing Sooyoug to actively participate in their ritualistic hunts, decorated with communal frenzy back then, preferring instead for Sooyoung to sit in and watch. It was hard not to feel like a bother.

It did not help that Sooyoung was deathly afraid of Joohyun, either, having recognised earlier on who called the shots in their home (was it really a home?).

 But Sooyoung refused to cry, even if she did run away for several weeks. That had been a fever dream.

They’d found her near-emaciated in ditch that she’d dug herself under a bridge, thinking to lay there and die, because nothing she ate sated this horrible, gnawing hunger and the black bile that she consequently threw up towards her desired end.

She’d no idea how they found her, but in the cloudy and hazy forms she saw from underneath heavy lids, she saw Seulgi’s frowning face and thought,  _good; it only takes my dying to get your attention._

Arms lifted her out of her self-imposed termination, and cradled her close, because look what starving someone of love and food could do. Fingers so gentle they must be Seungwan’s swept away the hair from her face, stroked Sooyoung’s gaunt cheek with the back of her hand. Joohyun held her hand tight, afraid she might drift away otherwise.

They came together like that, as a family that refused to leave one behind, or to die.

Later on, Sooyoung woke to Seulgi lying next to her, still asleep.

_how could you let me get that bad?_

Seulgi never apologised, not verbally anyway. But it was clear in her eyes, and her careful, mindful fingers as they skimmed past the skin of her shoulders, cheeks, the bridge of her nose, forehead, trickling all the way down to her painful dents of her ribs and chest cavity. Sooyoung knew no such love as this, so unsure and so honest, so she brought the wandering fingers to her lips and kissed them.

There’s a promise, in the flutter of Seulgi’s fingers:  _I won’t, from now on._

*

Yeri’s steakhouse is surprisingly nondescript, tucked away at a intersection that would have been busier in the day. Minimalistic, even. Perhaps that’s the look she’s going for; Yeri doesn’t seem like she’d do anything on accident. The doors are simple tempered glass with white wooden borders and a thin band of gold paint around the sides. The steakhouse looks like it could easily house near thirty people, with its mismatched chunks of wooden tables and plain black chairs sticking out like a bolded word in a script of elegant italics.

The lights are low-hanging on the ceiling, and to be honest, it looks like one of those hipster cafes that overprice everything.

“You know,” Saeron says after Yeri, stepping uncertainly into the restaurant and feeling intrusive about it. “I’m alright with a simple meal.”

Yeri’s already in the restaurant’s see-through kitchen, tying a dark-grey apron around her neck and untucking any hair caught under the knot. She rifles through the fridge sitting like a giant metallic beast in the corner, producing a slab of marbled meat that looks as expensive as everything else Yeri owns.

Yeri ignores her, asks with an uptick of one corner of her lips, “Do you have any beef with cow?”

“No,” Saeron says, waiting outside the sliding windows allowing her to see into the kitchen. “That looks awfully pricey.”

“It is,” says Yeri.

“I’m not sure I can afford it.”

“Sure you can,” there’s a twinkle in Yeri’s eyes again. “Call me unnie and that’s payment enough.”

“Do you always do favours expecting people to return them?” Saeron frowns.

“I never do anything that doesn’t get me what I want,” Yeri says, beginning to rub salt and pepper into the beef.

“And what do you want?”

Yeri’s smile is entirely disarming, so is the chuckle that follows. It raises the hair on Saeron’s arms and nape.  “I’m here, cooking you a meal. What do you think?”

Saeron takes a step back. “I don’t think I have to remind you that I’m underage.”

Yeri’s face crumples into a peevish frown. “I don’t want that.”

“What, then?”

“The pleasure of your company, of course.”

“So…a date?”

“Is that what this is?”

There’s something quite attractive in the assuredness in Yeri’s hands as she works, basting the meat with melted butter and more sprigs of rosemary and thyme leaves. If this is not a date, Yeri cooking for her in a bareback dress and heels is enough to feed her romantic notions to last a lifetime.

Saeron does not reply, afraid of giving herself away too quickly if she does. She has always played the game with her cards kept close to her chest. Fortunately, Yeri tells her to fetch a bottle of red wine from the cooler, distracted.

“I’m sure you know your way around alcohol,” is what Yeri says.

When Saeron returns with a chilled bottle (the least expensive she can find), and two wine glasses, Yeri plucks one from her hand to set aside, to Saeron’s chagrin.

“You’re underage; you’re not drinking.” Then, to the matter at hand, “How’d you like it done?”

Saeron says, “Rare, please.”

*

Yeri was a welcome addition to the family the way Sooyoung struggled to be. There was something about her — she was good at fitting into spaces and making a home out of it. And Joohyun doted on her. Well, everyone did.

She was first brought into their home barefooted and smeared with soot. Shrapnel had sliced her cheek open and she limped, and had an asthmatic wheeze to her breathing that would prove to be worrisome later on. She wore clothes that were too big for her, lumpy and misshapen clothes that she had no doubt procured somewhere, for they couldn’t have belonged to her.

Where Joohyun shied away from society, Yeri saw merit in mingling with humans, learning about them, adapting and making connections while still maintaining her anonymity. It was a fine line to walk and Yeri did it brilliantly, perhaps even better than Seulgi did.

Sooyoung was envious of that the most, how easily Yeri could belong somewhere and make something of it.

“Unnie.”

It was never Sooyoung unnie, not like it was Joohyun unnie, Seungwan unnie, or Seulgi unnie; it was only ever  _unnie_. Sooyoung raised her head from where she sat sharpening a carving knife with a whetstone, sitting cross-legged on the floor.

Yeri was street-smart in a way nothing else other than experience could teach her to be, and she was sometimes thorny and moody like an angsty teenager (which she was) but also capable of great compassion and empathy. And it was easy to forget, sometimes, that she had only been a child, too.

There was no measure of pain — pain was always relative, but Sooyoung had always felt as though Yeri’s pain was a heavy burden to carry on her own.

“Did you ever remember who your parents were?”

Sooyoung didn’t. They were blurry faces and distorted voices like bad reception on a phone and so she said as much, “No.”

Yeri’s too-easy smile twitched. “That must be nice.”

“I don’t know if it is.”

“I’ll tell you, it is.”

Sooyoung made to stand but stopped when Yeri put her hand on Sooyoung’s shoulder. “I think you should talk to Seungwan unnie about this.”

“If I wanted to talk to Seungwan unnie, I’d get myself a Hallmark card or book a therapist.” Her voice was acerbic, rushing to speak in mad delirium, feeling very much like a derailed train.

“What do you want from me, then?”

The look in Yeri’s eyes were deranged, and her voice was goading, trying to get a rise out of Sooyoung with that honeyed smile. “You must hate them. They left you on the streets to suffer.”

“Yeri,” Sooyoung warned.

“Isn’t that the truth, though? You shouldn’t run from the truth, unnie; that’s no way to live.”

And unfortunately, the only way Yeri processed her grief was in bouts of anger, picking fights just so she could swing blind punches at any person unlucky enough to be nearby. Sooyoung had the decency to put aside the carving knife, swatting aside Yeri’s hand on her shoulder to get to her feet, where height is a meaningless advantage.

“Well, they’re dead now,” Yeri went on, “but did you ever try to find them?”

Sooyoung had, and her search was fuelled by single-minded doggedness.

“And if you had found them, what would you have done to them, do you think?”

There were a great many things Sooyoung was tempted to do, and it would take up to several days, maybe even weeks, to fully satisfy her.

“Yeri.”

“What would  _they_ do to you? Were they living well? Were they happy? Or was your father some piss-poor drunk who couldn’t keep his cock in his trousers?”

The subsequent slap left a stinging red handprint on Yeri’s cheek. Yeri spat out a laugh, and brought her hand up to gingerly touch the quickly-reddening flesh.

“Yeri,” Sooyoung said, breathing hard through her mouth. “I’m sor—”

But Yeri interjected, “So you  _do_ hate them. That’s good. That’s one thing we have in common.”

*

**Author's Note:**

> If I don't come back to edit this, it'll most likely mean I'm dead.


End file.
